Even though watching live Neil Armstrong doing his first step in the moon marked my youth and all my dreams for long time, even though faster cars, supersonic planes and colour television were admirable the biggest technological revolution that happened during my life time – and unfortunately not in one of the early stages – has been the evolution of communication. It is nearly impossible sometimes to describe how was before mobiles and internet. While my studies abroad I was communicating with my family back home every second Thursday and that between six and seven early evening, having limited time and barely be able to make sure that everything was relatively normal. News and politics back home was something rare and newspaper only if you were lucky to be early in the morning somewhere around the Greek embassy in London and get a two days old paper.

Nowadays I’m having coffee in the centre of Helsinki and my nephew calls me from Athens because he forgot to tell me something about a new Greek artist or a very close friend from Cape Town for something I wrote in my Facebook page. Amazing! And yes reading the news has been a new world. Nowadays you can have even live connection with the events happening anywhere around this globe. And strangely this technological evolution after all these decades abroad didn’t make me any more or less homesick but definitely brought me closer to Greece. And what is going on the last three years in Greece of course have fully motivate my interest to watch constantly any news. But apart form that my last visits to Greece the last few months and after a long period away, verified the information I had online and let me witness with all my senses what’s going on making it even easier to follow current events.

A few months ago I wrote an article about the dangers of the neo-Nazi party (the Golden Down) in Greece and how its rise to a political power was going to influence not only the political system and the society but we were endangering legitimising fascism in Greece. Parliamentarians o f this party have publicly even inside the Greek parliament have said unacceptable things like that history hasn’t judged Hitler fairly because history is written from communists and liberal Jews, that the only period Greece was really free was during the military dictatorship. And a few hours ago the leader of the neo-Nazis in Greece Michaloliakos – when doubt for the use of the exclamation Mr. you better not use it – in national television interviewed declared that he cannot visit Germany even though he would like to because he will be arrested as a known Holocaust denailist. And I was shocked because the Greek police didn’t arrest him that moment in the television studio.

This man and his gang of criminal minds this moment have 6.9% of the electoral body, 18 seats ion the Greek parliament and according all the latest surveys they are going to reach a 13% (literally double their power) in the next Greek elections. And all that in the name of democracy. So, in the name of democracy we have somebody who doesn’t believe in democracy, reminisces and glorifies periods without democracy and aims to ruin democracy! But this man and his gang of criminal minds didn’t only manage to legitimise fascism in Greece, he went one step further. He managed somehow to persuade Greeks in the name of the mother-country that this world is shared between the ones who are with us and the others who are against us, they hate us and they want to destroy our life style and virtues. For this gang the world is you either with us even though you might not vote for us or you are against the country, our values, our ancestors, our principals and history indirectly connecting themselves with the country, the correct values, the ancestors, the history and the principals.

But who are the others? The ones who are against the country, our values, our ancestors, our principals and history? Don’t worry the neo-Nazi gang has clearly identified them. They are communists, gays, Roma, immigrants and liberal Jews. By the way, funny thing how these two words always go together and they cover everything, you can be the one or the other and the second part just emphasizes the evilness …according to them always. Still this civil-war spirit has spread all around Greece this moment in many different levels and everything not to the liking of some in one moment transfers to anti-patriotic, anti-Greek and following the logic of the masses takes unbelievable dimensions.

In all that you must add two elements. The government and the ones responsible with the law enforcement, the police. In the name of national unity – and I have wrote about it in the past extensively – after the dictatorship expurgation never came to Greece. It was limited to a certain level of the most profiling members or supporters of the dictatorship. The rest soon found settler even in the police, the army and the civil services. Former torturers, collaborators and informers found themselves in police uniform even with promotions. In the name of national unity. And these people put the foundation of what consist today’s Greek police. Nobody was surprised that 95% of the policemen or the members of the law enforcement in Greece voted for the neo-Nazis.

Samaras, the Greek Prime Minister and leader of the conservative party likes to present himself as a renovator, the savoir of Greece before the steep and the ultimate democrat but for people with memories beyond the 21st century Antonis Samaras for long represented the extreme right of the conservative party. it was only that the memories of the dictatorship were still fresh and alive that hold people like him to create a party or openly support the dictators and their ideology back in late 1970s. A raving anti-communist and nationalist who had as a mentor and the man who introduced him to and into the Greek political life E. Averoff, a Greek Politician who will remembered in Greek history as the bridge maker. The man who tried to built bridges between the dictators and the then “legal” establishment flagging his anti-communism and anti-anything that was further his dark political spectrum. Antonis Samaras didn’t change later and in early 1990s was kicked out of the government while foreign minister while led by his hysterical nationalism made lethal mistakes that Greece pays even now and is ironic that he talks about uncontrollable immigration the man who open the boarders.

Now combine those three elements and you might get a picture. The last few days and while Greeks are suffering form the new austerity measures, with unemployment reaching pan-European records with 26.8% the official number and the homeless impossible to count but the streets of Athens full of them the Greek police under the orders of the government decided to make a “purification” of the streets from Roma, immigrants, anarchists, addicts and communists! All in the same bucket. The police using extreme violence and gas has gone after immigrants – sadly according to the BBC even tourists thought of …illegal immigrants, met the Greek police brutality - without even bother to ask if they have the right papers, just judging from colour and presence according to their stereotypes. Roma ignoring their basic human rights even the fact that they are Greek citizens with equal rights to the policemen and the politicians themselves; emptying with violence their settlements without having even thought or cared for a solution. And spaces that have been for decades unoccupied and young people have transformed them into centres for their creativity and expression, accusing them that they are parasites, drug addicts and …anarchists!!! The latest event with what’s going on this minute in the center of Athens with Villa Amalia.

Villa Amalia, a known Victorian building in the centre of Athens left to ruin, left and ignored from the authorities for more than four decades has been occupied the last two decades by young people used as settler for homeless and a place of expression for young people with free concerts, forums, events and parties; a place all Athenians know even the ones who live for decades thousands of kilometres away. But Public Order minister Nikos Dendias (indeed is called …public order ,ministry) said, "I would like to make this clear: A democratic society cannot allow the forces of lawlessness and chaos to hinder the country's course to recovery." And he did what? Send the worst part of the repression police force with the gas and bats to …enforce democracy and the spirit of the country's course to recovery! So Greece is in danger of homeless and ill people or students and the unemployed youth! Because if there was any sense of dignity in this country when you talk about addicts what you do is give them a hand to help them and not kick them on the face. Because if fascism hadn’t become concisely a political ally against “the forces of lawlessness and chaos” to protect the public order as Mr. Dendias and Mr. Samaras understands it, then they might ...might cared for the needs of these people, especially the young, the ill, the unemployed and the homeless, the people who they are obliged even constitutionally to care.

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I want to add something here. I heard officials saying that they are going to create an art and music centre in the Villa Amalia. Really? Why do I have the sense that I heard that before and not only in Greece, even in Finland, in Helsinki to be exact. So they “re-take” from all those “forces of lawlessness and chaos” buildings that were left for decades to become ruins and in their place for the good of the people and public order they built grotesque building using public money, built for billions of Euros from construction companies with “special” relationships with the public sector, overvalued to cover some “presents” here and there and in the end excluding with their prices and status – some of them have even face control - the youth and the poor! All for the good of the people and the public order!

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And a last question. How does it happen every time the police in Greece does one of those clearing acts that there are always around them and helping them even carrying bats “protesters civilians” accidently dressed always in black with the logo of the neo-Nazi party?

Villa Amalias activities included: concerts, theatre performances, a free printing facility, free part-time daycare for kids of Greeks and immigrants alike, art exhibitions, movie projections, discussion forums, a bar, free language lessons and much more. Not to mention that the only thing preventing the building from collapsing in the first place was the members of the squat that maintained the place out of their own efforts. Seriously mr. Dendias and mr. Samaras... how much more public you half-witts can a damn building be?

Also, another interesting aspect of this attack of the state against the Villa Amalias squat is that Victoria square, the larger area in which the building was located, was one of the last few areas of Athens that the neo-nazis could not get a hold of, in their efforts to terrorise immigrants and purify the streets of Athens by injecting hatred and that alone was the achievement of Villa Amalias' squat. So, what we have here is another clear indication that the government and the state are run by ultra-nationailists, friends of the neo-nazis. When the neo-nazis can't manage something by themselves, state comes to the rescue.

Emanuel Paparella

2013-01-11 14:10:03

Indeed Thanos. This is quite a sad scenario and it does not augur well for the EU.

“The medium is the message” quipped Marshal McLuhan some fifty years ago. He understood that technology as a medium is neutral, like a pen, and can be used for good or for evil but he also pointed out that the medium can also be symptomatic of the message.

It should not have escaped notice by now since the 60, the times of McLuhan, that the faster the means of communications get, the more trivial and banal the communication gets. There are students now who write term papers in 60 words or less,the space allowed by face book… The art of writing an insightful thoughtful letter, albeit once every two weeks, seems to have been all but lost. As the culture becomes more banal and trivial (back to C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures…) the technology advances exponentially.

Hitler was able to do so much damage because of 20th century technology. Should another Hitler come on the scene in our “enlightened” super-technologically advanced 21st century, it will make the damage of the first Hitler look like a picnic in comparison. Who would have thought that fascism could raise its ugly head again in a democratic liberal “enlightened” EU? Perhaps McLuhan had a point: the medium is the message. Socrates would counsel however that perhaps knowledge should not be considered power but virtue and if one has no virtue it is by far better that he not go to school and remain a simpleton and an ignoramus for the rest of his life.